Bernhard Waldenfels

Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics XIII, 2011, 1 www.units.it/etica ISSN 1825- 5167 Photo courtesy: Piero Corubolo 2 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics XIII, 2011, 1 MONOGRAPHICA The Paths of the Alien: On the Philosophy of Bernhard Waldenfels Ferdinando G. Menga Guest Editor’s Preface p. 7 Andrea Altobrando Dalla fondazione della conoscenza alla comunità degli uomini liberi p. 16 Gabriella Baptist Nei sensi dell’arte: Bernhard Waldenfels ‘lettore’ di Pier Paolo Pasolini p. 38 Thomas Bedorf Die politische Differenz und die Kontingenz der Ordnung p. 46 Pascal Delhom Politique du contrat p. 57 Francesca Dell’Orto Il tempo dell’ordine e il gioco dello sdoppiamento p. 67 Xavier Escribano Fenomenología y antropología de la corporalidad en Bernhard Waldenfels p. 86 Matthias Flatscher Antwort als Verantwortung p. 99 Petra Gehring Wie Phänomenologie interveniert p. 134 Salvatore Giammusso Sitzen und Gehen. Zur Hermeneutik des Leibes in den fernöstlichen Künsten p. 136 Antje Kapust Ethics of Respect and Human Dignity. A Responsive Reading p. 151 Krassimira Kruschkova The ‘responsive event’ at steirischer herbst ’09 or Bernhard Waldenfels’ ‘kinetic epoché’ and performance today p. 164 3 Gustavo Leyva Identidad, Alteridad y Extrañeza p. 174 Käte Meyer-Drawe Staunen – ein “sehr philosophisches Gefühl” p. 196 María del Carmen La atención: una mirada desde la Paredes-Martín fenomenología responsiva p. 206 Mauro Ponzi Übergang, Übergangszeit, Übertragung: Eine Hommage an Bernhard Waldenfels p. 217 Philipp Stoellger Das Bild als Anderer und der Andere als Bild? p. 230 Michel Vanni A qui s’adressent les requêtes qui nous touchent? Appel des choses et urgence écologique p. 248 Niels Weidtmann Erfahrung des Zwischen: Anmerkungen zu Waldenfels’ Phänomenologie der Fremderfahrung p. 258 Ichiro Yamaguchi Die paradoxe Simultaneität inmitten des Widerfahrnisses p. 271 SYMPOSIUM Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account Janna Thompson On Brock’s Account of Global Justice p. 293 Jon Mandle Brock on Global Justice and Choosing p. 298 Principles Gillian Brock Global Justice and What We Owe One Another p. 308 SIMPOSIO Adriano Fabris, TeorEtica. Filosofia della 4 relazione Leonardo Messinese Primato della Teoria o primato della p. 319 TeorEtica? Graziano Lingua Sul primato della relazione in Adriano Fabris Attilio Franchi Sulla filosofia della relazione di Adriano p. 330 Fabris Mariano Ure TeorEtica: algunas reflexiones p. 338 Adriano Fabris Risposte ai miei critici p. 345 VARIA Elvio Baccarini Sergio Cremaschi su metaetica ed etica applicata p. 355 Pierpaolo Marrone Questioni di consenso p. 362 Luca Mori I limiti del consenso tra sfere valoriali p . 374 alternative Riccardo Fanciullacci La sovranità dell’Idea del Bene: Iris Murdoch p. 393 con Platone Informazioni sulla rivista p. 439 Information on the journal 5 MONOGRAPHICA The Paths of the Alien: On the Philosophy of Bernhard Waldenfels 6 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XIII, 2011, 1, pp. 7-15 Guest Editor’s Preface: The Experience of the Alien and the Philosophy of Response Ferdinando G. Menga Universität Tübingen Institut für Ethik Ev.-Theologische Fakultät ferdinandomenga@gmail.com 0. Introducing the Author This issue of “Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics” collects international and interdisciplinary contributions devoted to the thought of one of the most original and renowned contemporary masters in phenomenology: the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels.1 Waldenfels‟ philosophical orientation – characterized both by a close dialogue with the doctrine of his French master Maurice Merleau-Ponty and a thorough confrontation with thinkers such as Husserl, Foucault, Levinas, Ricoeur and Derrida2 – can be traced back to that constellation of thinking which, by putting at its center the phenomenon of intersubjectivity, attempts to show how every domain of human experience is faced by a constitutive intervention of alterity as an element calling for constant questioning and inevitable transformations. Within this paradigm, Waldenfels offers, however, an undoubtedly original contribution, since he does not remain at the level of a general doctrine of otherness, but rather: by exactly “bending” the category of alterity towards the notion of alienness (Fremdheit), he charges the other with a peculiar factical density, which frees it from the latent risk of a mere logical- ontological opposition to the category of the same. Hence, through this philosophical twist, Waldenfels proposes a genuine phenomenological discourse, which, by avoiding the abstract duality otherness/sameness, places the other on the very plural and unstable terrain of factical experience. 1 I would like to express here my gratitude to the editorial board of the journal for having accepted the publishing of this issue devoted to Bernhard Waldenfels‟ philosophy. Equal gratitude goes also to all contributors, without whose scientific effort this project would have never been realized. 2 Proof of this constant dialogue can be found in the whole work of Waldenfels. I limit myself to mention here the volumes in which such a confrontation acquires explicit traits: Cf. B. Waldenfels, Phänomenologie in Frankreich, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1983; Id., Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1995; Id., Idiome des Denkens. Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge II, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 2005. FERDINANDO G. MENGA It is exactly this constitutive plural character of experience, in which alienness is constantly involved, what makes Waldenfels‟ phenomenology particularly open to confrontations with several discourse domains. We can recall here his dialogue with and responses from disciplines like psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, pedagogy, ethnology, sociology, political theory, ethics, theology, legal studies, linguistics, as well as architecture and arts (in its several expressions). There is no need to spend here much more effort in order to assert the dialogical and open character of Waldenfels‟ phenomenology of alienness, as its evidence – I believe – is absolutely well disclosed by the very broad domain of contributions gathered in this issue. What I would like to provide, instead, is a general orientation map for the readers who approach Waldenfels‟ thought for the first time, and this with the hope to offer them, firstly, the indispensable tools in order to better appreciate the essays collected here and, secondly, a good reason for starting an independent research path within the work of this master in phenomenology. 1. The Role of Alienness Within Experience Waldenfels‟ whole phenomenological effort is centered on a very clear and strong point of departure: as long as we assume the phenomenon of the alien in terms of “something” or “someone”, i.e. as an unproblematic accessible object of research, which stays more or less in front of us, we will have missed it from the start. In this case, indeed, our attitude, despite its willingness to being open or its inclination to repulsion towards the alien, would keep following the traditional structure of thought, according to which “alienness” is certainly admitted, however, only under a clear premise: alien can only be thought of starting from the sphere of property, the sphere of the own, that is, a realm to which indubitable ontological priority and hierarchical superiority are to be ascribed. By following this perspective, what would be inevitably affirmed is that consolidated interpretation of experience, according to which the alien, for how much it might represent a destabilizing moment within the own, is nevertheless bound to undergo a process of final overcoming and re-appropriation, thanks to which, in the end, the presupposed and unquestioned priority of the own itself is reestablished. This kind of unquestioned certainty, which gives a clear priority to the own, is the attitude underlying all the traditional operations of thought which, while on the one hand foresee an indubitable participation or intervention of the alien, on the other hand return too easily to the own self, 8 Guest Editor’s Preface since nothing can really question the own, if the own is guaranteed a higher originarity (Ursprünglichkeit) since the beginning. Just to quote some examples of this traditional attitude, we may refer to Hegel‟s dialectic, in which alienness appears only as Entfremdung, i.e. as a transitory form in a process in which consciousness tends to “overcome the being alien” and “discover” the world and the present as its “own property”.3 This is also the case of Gadamer‟s hermeneutics, whose task, despite its weaker pretentions if compared to the Hegelian project, remains the overcoming of the alien, that is, the recovery of comprehension as a more originary condition, in which the ownness of sense is to be presupposed to every interruption produced by an alien incomprehension.4 The same strategy is also at work in the Habermas‟ communication discourse which, starting from the presupposition of a common logos, common sense and communicative reason, does not allow the intervention of any radical alien, but only the participation of a relative alien,5 who can therefore always be part of a successful strategy of inclusion.6 In this sense, Habermas‟ communicative strategy, by founding itself on the premise of a given symmetrical reciprocity of the participants, far from giving itself as an “inter-realm of dialogue”7 between own and alien, works as a monologue put into scene dialogically.8 Precisely here Waldenfels inserts his main critical warning:

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